She wanted me to, there in her room in the basement. I was not an expert on making out by any stretch of the imagination but I had been spending a lot of time with this girl.
She was a little nervous and when I had moved closer and leaned in because of the motion—not because I was making my Official Move, she had looked down at the last second to scratch her nose on her hands.
It was the giggly sort of nervous. I was sitting on the floor and she was lying on her bed, our faces close enough it would the smallest adjustment to my posture and our lips would meet.
She paused mid-sentence to think of a word. She was distracted enough I moved in and brought our faces together.
We kissed and I must have blinked or something because now it’s twenty years later. She stayed awake and made sure to tell me it was officially twenty years. I always remember the date but somehow I forget she likes to start at midnight. I joke that it was much later in the evening by the time we kissed.
I know twenty years is nothing to sneeze at but also celebrating things extra because it’s a round number seems arbitrary to me. Don’t get me wrong—I love the number ten and sure it’s neat when it can cleanly be divided into a number (and don’t even get me started about the number five!) but I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing that propels one into a partying frenzy.
When people ask what we’re doing to celebrate I say, “Stay married. Probably.” But we like to sit around and make plans for the future that will some someday, somehow involve just us. Her and me trying to get a jump on the future version of “us” that does not inherently include our daughter and son. We are planning on being the youngest old people ever.
Secretly we have started putting our change and spare dollars into a jar to someday buy an RV. She’ll drive. I’ll write. Maybe find a nice campground to tend for a summer...
When people ask what the secret is I tell them there isn’t one secret, really. Maybe it’s because she is co-dependent and too forgiving and I am an irritable bastard who feels less irritable around her.
It’s certainly rare to find someone who doesn’t make me itch like people do; even people I proudly admit to loving can say or do something and bottom line is it makes me feel like the only way to get a good scratch in is with some distance from them. That I found such a person with boobs and a fetish for bastards is not a card you can expect to be dealt twice.
No one is perfect and I’m positive enough to hope my cynical nature helped preserve my marriage when times where tough. I could tell myself that it folly to think there was such a thing as a perfect fit. I’ve met what seemed like a perfect couple and seen them not only get divorced but they end their marriage in such a way that jaws drop. And while my wife is certainly capable of driving me crazy I’ve never thought there is a female out there who would drive me less crazy. I mean, I’m a bastard but people like me—I hear their stories. If you say “adult” to me I silently add the word “dysfunctional” before it.
And I also know I’m not mounted high up on a horse named Functional. I’m what I’d like to call mostly functional. I know funds are low and rent is always due. But I also got the night off to go do something. Even if I’m not sure what we will be doing blowing off work seems like the thing to do, and is there for responsible.
